Certainly the strongest in the series so far, though interest will really be dependent on how swept away you are in the passion of our inspector on his historical subject. If it clues readers into history as a narrative, with bias from the writer playing a monumental role in deciding that history, let alone the narrative becoming the zeitgeist—so much the better. It makes for an interesting case, chasing source information, making deductions and clues. Basically, a wonderful parallel to solving an actual crime in the here and now, only one entirely of the mind.

Which, of course, has become a trope in plenty of crime fiction. Countless episodes of detective/crime shows have used this device now, but usually as a gotcha moment on the audience, discovering something about a previous case or their first case they couldn’t solve, etc. etc. you get the idea. But this still feels quite fresh to me. Probably, it’s slightly daring choosing a dry subject, but I think it is very good at appealing to a ven diagram of readers who may not necessarily otherwise be into other aspects of the novel, were others not present.